His eyes
ranged also over all the basilicas, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni in
Laterano, the cradle of the papacy, San Paolo-fuori-le-Mura, Santa Croce
in Gerusalemme, Sant' Agnese, and the others; they beheld, too, the domes
of the Gesu of Sant' Andrea della Valle, San Carlo and San Giovanni dei
Fiorentini, and indeed all those four hundred churches of Rome which make
the city like a /campo santo/ studded with crosses. And Leo XIII could
moreover see the famous monuments testifying to the pride of successive
centuries--the Castle of Sant' Angelo, that imperial mausoleum which was
transformed into a papal fortress, the distant white line of the tombs of
the Appian Way, the scattered ruins of the baths of Caracalla and the
abode of Septimius Severus; and then, after the innumerable columns,
porticoes, and triumphal arches, there were the palaces and villas of the
sumptuous cardinals of the Renascence, the Palazzo Farnese, the Palazzo
Borghese, the Villa Medici, and others, amidst a swarming of facades and
roofs. But, in particular, just under his window, on the left, the Pope
was able to see the abominations of the unfinished district of the castle
fields. In the afternoon, when he strolled through his gardens, bastioned
by the wall of the fourth Leo like the plateau of a citadel, his view
stretched over the ravaged valley at the foot of Monte Mario, where so
many brick-works were established during the building frenzy.
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